CAF In The News

salon.com — It has been 100 days since Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. The 100th day of a presidency is traditionally a time for taking stock of what the new occupant of the White House has achieved -- especially when the nation confronts a crisis, as in 1933 and 2009, or when there has been true ideological regime change -- again, as in 1933 and 2009. Salon asked 21 writers, politicians, activists and economists for their assessment of the Obama presidency so far. The state of the president's report card is (mostly) strong. He earns a high GPA, though there are critics both left and right ready to give him failing grades in a few crucial areas.

nationaljournal.com — Having been frustrated and even angered by the last two Democratic presidents, labor activists have decided to accentuate the positive when talking about the Obama administration.

jacksonfreepress.com — Chewing some gristle on tax day? Here’s a bit of news for you. Mississippi’s two Republican senators in Washington, D.C., Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker, voted for another tax break for the über-wealthy this month, voting to raise the full exemption on inheritances from $7 million to $10 million per couple and to drop the top rate on fortunes over $10 million from 45 percent to 35 percent.

thenation.com — Two security guards in dark suits towered over Mary Carol Jennings, a spiky-haired medical student wearing a white doctor's coat, as she and some fifty others tried to enter DC's Ritz-Carlton Hotel one morning in early March. The contingent included representatives of the AFL-CIO, MoveOn and the Campaign for America's Future. Jennings was flanked by two members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee who held a giant certificate for the head of America's Health Insurance Plans, the trade group meeting inside the hotel.

thehill.com — When it comes to healthcare reform, Democrats in Congress claim they are much more unified compared to the early ’90s, when they fumbled a chance to overhaul the system, but the same obstacles that have snagged efforts in the past still loom.

yourdailyjournal.com — A recently released study by the Campaign for America’s Future found that President Obama’s budget proposal would extend Pell grants to nearly 8,000 more North Carolina students by cutting lender subsidies.

tnr.com — Seventy-three years after a white-suited Huey Long was assassinated in Baton Rouge, the iron-fisted Louisiana governor is all the rage in Barack Obama's Washington. At a time when a crash course in the New Deal has supplanted Watergate studies as the capital's requisite history lesson, attention is suddenly being paid to the Kingfish, as well as radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, the two leading 1930s tribunes of little-man economic anger. When you sit down with Obama insiders, Long's name pops up in one conversation, Coughlin's in the next. "You have to remember," says one Obama adviser, "Huey Long and left-wing populism were a much bigger problem for Franklin Roosevelt than the Republicans."

mitchellrepublic.com — A new report claims that 819 additional South Dakota students will receive grants for college if government subsidies to private lenders are cut, but private lenders say the government is overestimating the savings that would result from cutting subsidies.

americanchronicle.com — An additional 27,547 students in California would receive Pell Grants if excessive lender subsidies are cut, according to a new report released today by the Campaign for America´s Future. Today´s report shows that this simple change would provide an average Pell Grant of $3,531 to about 573,490 students across the state.

nytimes.com — In any effort to restructure American health care, two interconnected goals inevitably compete for primacy. One is providing health coverage to the uninsured, counted in 2007 at 46 million, or 15 percent of the population, and almost certainly more now. The other is slowing the relentless and unsustainable growth of health costs, which threaten virtually every family, in imagination if not in fact.